NEW YORK—The puck slid, then stopped. It stopped in the ice shavings, the little snowdrifts, the pieces of the rink carved up by the relentless churn of hockey. Both these teams played outdoor games this year, and the Rangers played in snow. Madison Square Garden is kept very cold, even for a hockey rink, but there was still enough slush left to save the New York Rangers. Maybe Henrik Lundqvist left some there on purpose.

“Thank God for soft ice now and then,” said Rangers coach Alain Vigneault. “I’ve been in the game a long time to know that sometimes the hockey gods are there. They were there tonight.”

The Rangers came into this game trailing the Los Angeles Kings 3-0. The Kings had flown their families across America, wives and children and fathers and moms, and the Stanley Cup was outside the building but nearby, in case it was needed. A 3-0 deficit doesn’t offer much for hope. Hope, as Kings coach Darryl Sutter said, is a dangerous thing.

But twice the Rangers got bounces that led to goals, and twice the Kings advanced the puck as far as the New York goal line but no further, and the Rangers won Game 4 2-1 to avoid the sweep.

The first time, with a little over eight minutes left in the first period, an Alec Martinez shot dribbled all the way to the red line, exactly on it. Jeff Carter lunged. But New York’s Anton Stralman lunged at the same time, redirected Carter’s stick, and swept the puck away before it crossed the border. It was perfect work under pressure, a sort of swordfight to the death. It was 1-0 for the Rangers at that point, and a goal would have greatly changed the game.

“Yeah, it’s one of those things, you need a little luck to kind of succeed with,” said Stralman.

And then with 1:11 left in the third period and the Kings coming again, again, a puck got through Lundqvist and . . . stopped. New York centre Derek Stepan desperately jumped on it like it was a grenade, swept it towards Lundqvist, tucked it as far under his goalie as he could as the ceiling crashed in.

“Luckily I stay deep in the net so there’s a lot of snow there,” said Lundqvist, who has now won his past eight elimination games at Madison Square Garden, posting a 0.99 goals-against average and a .968 save percentage. “We didn’t want to see the Cup coming out on our home ice. Just the thought of it makes me sick.”

That was the difference. A puck is three inches wide. The Rangers were, in total, six inches from elimination, six inches from the rope bridge snapping. It was enough.

“A lot of times you start panicking and you end up whacking it in your own net, and we did a good job of being calm when it was sitting there, and getting it back underneath Hank for a whistle,” said Rangers defenceman Mark Staal. “If they get that (first) one, they have that momentum, and we were able to make a stand long enough that they didn’t. And when they got some chances, Hank was there to make some big saves. He’s big-time.”

If it was going to be a sweep, it was going to be over Lundqvist’s body, or at least past it. He has been the constant for these Rangers for so long now, one of the great goaltenders of his generation, and he has seen so many inferior goaltenders win Stanley Cups. It takes a team to win it all, no matter who your goalie is.

And after goals by Benoit Pouliot on a nearly high deflection and Martin St. Louis on a happy bounce, the Kings came hard. The Rangers were outshot 15-1 in the third period, 26-3 after the second goal, and when it was all counted Lundqvist needed to stop 40 shots to survive.

He deserved this, really. He deserved something better than a sweep. Lundqvist was beaten nearly nine minutes into the second on a Dustin Brown breakaway on which Brown went side to side six times to beat him, but there were so many other chances. Jeff Carter on a breakaway. Tanner Pearson, over and over. Another Carter partial breakaway. Brown, and then Tyler Toffoli in close. Los Angeles owned the puck. They just couldn’t quite make it do what they wanted. Lundqvist is great for a reason.

“He never stops surprising me,” said Stepan. “It easily could have been 1-1 coming out of L.A., it could have been 2-0 us, you never know.”

The Kings had walked in with the confidence of conquerors, which made sense. This was as comfortable as they have been all playoff long.

“Yeah, once we won that first game of the San Jose series, we kind of had a feeling we were going to come back and win that series,” said Kings defenceman Drew Doughty at the morning skate. “And you could see it in their eyes and their team and their captains and leaders that they were worried about us coming back. So we don’t want to give these guys any life.”

Whatever was in the Rangers’ eyes, there will be a little more life today. But the Kings, if you look, seem unlikely to be worried.

“It was probably their best game of the playoffs that they’ve played against us,” said Vigneault. “But our guys competed. I mean, they’re a real good team. They threw everything they had at us. Our goaltender stood tall, gave us a chance. We have another chance. We get to play.”

Afterwards, the Kings met their families, about 160 of whom were corralled backstage, and then the whole operation was packed up and hauled back across the country for Game 5 on Friday. Los Angeles is still almost certainly going to win this.

But they were six inches away on this night, in a game played over 200 feet of ice that gets chopped into tiny pieces. And because of that, the coronation will have to wait.

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